Speech to the World Bank Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation

Feb 2007
Click here to watch the multimedia presentation or read the text of the speech below.
Introduction
 
Thank you for inviting Engineers Without Borders Canada to speak at this exciting gathering.
Before proceeding, I’d like to summarise our work . The first part of our mandate is to make Canada the most pro-development country in the world. Canada needs to change, whether it is our consumer habits, our corporations’ actions when they operate overseas, or our government’s policies. EWB helps bring about this change – as you can see by the 500 people forming a giant 0.7% on our parliament hill.
The second part of our mandate focuses on helping to build rural technical capacity in Africa. We send volunteers to work with partner organisations – a ministry of agriculture or an NGO – to help their staff deliver better development projects. Our volunteers combine engineering knowledge with extensive training about development realities on the ground. It is through the efforts of our over 200 volunteers that we are able to gather a picture of what development efforts really look like day to day.
Today I will focus my remarks on exploring some issues related to technology and development in the context of rural Africa.
I should point out that we take for granted that STI capacity in Africa is crucial. We believe in and support the creation of a network of rural engineers, technicians and entrepreneurs who will be offering technical services to rural communities.
I don’t think anyone here underestimates the role of technology as rural Africans seek to reduce their vulnerability. Whether it is improvements in food transformation, accessible clean water, affordable energy, good infrastructure, improved agriculture production or any number of other areas, the adoption of new technologies and techniques will be key.
The question that we ask ourselves is “What is the role of STI in helping the spread of appropriate solutions to these problems?”
As an engineer it might seem like the answer is instinctively simple: “develop a new technical solution”. If water isn’t clean, how can we purify it? If people aren‘t growing enough crops, how can we develop a small scale irrigation pump”.
However, a pure focus on improving the “technology” could lead us down a false path.
I vividly remember an early trip to Africa – to Zambia. I was staying in a village, and the baby girl in the hut next to mine was sick with diarrhoea. Yet 8 km away was a store that sold this product called Chlorin. A 50 cent bottle would chlorinate almost 700 litres of water. This was affordable, appropriate, available – yet still Beatrice was sick.
Ian Smillie’s insightful book about the role of technology in development, “Mastering the Machine”, chronicles the growth of the over 1000 appropriate technology organisations and over 1000 books contained in the Appropriate Technology Handbook. Innovations ranged from rainwater harvesting systems to biogas generators to solar drying. The paradox is that notwithstanding all these “better technical solutions”, most haven’t been adopted by rural farmers in Africa.
This reflects our experience working on over 100 projects in Africa: that the technical solution to many of the problems facing the rural poor already exists, but isn’t being adopted.
This seems to be the key issue with regard to technology and Africa. While oral rehydration salts aren‘t widely available, Coke is. While farming practices haven’t changed much in a hundred years, cell phones are spreading like wildfire. Why?
It is this paradox that I want to explore today: Why aren‘t technologies that would help Africans to reduce their vulnerability being adopted?
To answer this question, we need to focus on more than solving a technical problem. New technology – and the associated changes in techniques – must be adopted by users, and their perspectives are paramount.
I think it is relevant to Science and Technology policy makers and practitioners because we are also responsible for development outcomes. And these outcomes are realised when technology is adopted. Adopted. By users.
I’m almost embarrassed at how simple this is as a message. However, I’d like to share a few examples illustrating what happens if a user-centered approach is neglected.
In particular, we will propose that the efforts of people in this room ensure that technology development efforts better incorporate the
functional, economic and social/culture
realities of prospective users. In my case the “users” are rural Africans, in your case they may be different, however I think the same focus and principles apply.
1. Understanding the user’s cultural/social context
 
Let’s take the example of an improved brick press, a technology we were working with with a partner in Zambia.
This technology produces a compressed earth and cement brick that is as good as a cinder block yet as uses 1/16th the cement and so is much cheaper. Our partners were trying to determine why more units aren‘t selling, as there are innumerable walls for which this compresses earth brick would be perfect. It turns out that users and engineers have a different definition of wall. To an engineer it is a structure preventing people getting from A to B – in which case the new, cheaper brick is much better. To Zambians, it turns out that a wall is a status symbol; having a concrete wall brings more prestige than any other type of wall. As a result, homeowners aren‘t interested in this brick maker.
This is no different than in the west, where the prestige of cars outweighs their functional benefits. Technologists sometimes forget that reasons of prestige, status and beliefs all play a key role in technology adoption.
In contrast, one of Zambia’s most successful companies, Harvey’s roof tiles, understands this. [slide with “the only thing between you and God should be a Harvey roof Tile]
2 Understanding the users’ functional realities.
 
We have been working with an organisation that helped a village cooperative set up and run a Cassava processing plant to extract starch for sale to the local markets. Production was about 600kg of Cassava/day and the operation employed 16 people. The organisation was now working to help the cooperative been self-sufficient.
What was interesting was a divergence between what the cooperative wanted and the engineer from the supporting organisation focused on. Because the cooperatives’ starch extraction rate was only 17% - quite far below a feasible target of 25%, the engineer focused on improving this in a technical manner, by adding a mixer and a pulveriser.
The cooperative members, however, knew that Cassava rots within a couple of days of being pulled from the ground unless it is processed. And given that they had machine downtime issues (estimated at 20-25% of the time), they were more concerned about increasing reliability – perhaps by adding a hand crank to the grater or through other means. As a result, the new extraction machines are not being used.
A better focus on the functionality requested by users – as opposed to the functionality that seems to make sense to a technology developer – would have helped. We frequently see in Africa a lack of understanding of the functional reality of rural Africans.
3 Understanding the users economics – at all levels of the value chain.
 
For rural households to adopt new technologies the economic incentives must be aligned. A good example is of the treadle pump, a simple foot-powered irrigation pump that can be manufactured locally and costs ~100$.
The economics behind a treadle pump are actually quite complicated. It involves the complexity of a reliable manufacturing chain; the presence of service technicians, the need for farmers to have access to input markets, and output markets. All of these actors need to make a profit. And there are new sophisticated approaches helping to address this.
However, there are still misaligned incentives from the aid sector that undermines this.
For example, in one southern African country over 50,000 treadle pumps have been distributed for free to farmers. This has wholly undermined the market for local entrepreneurs. No farmer now will buy a treadle pump because they would rather wait to see if they will be given one next year. This is repeated all across Africa, as local governments and charitable NGOs give out free technology,. We have seen this with treadle pumps, with fertiliser, with food aid, and every time, it undermines markets.
These cases illustrate that even if a new technology or technique satisfies a technical requirement it faces barriers to adoption if the users’ realities arent understood.
Why is it difficult for development-driven technology to incorporate users’ context?
 
Differences in technology production
 
If we return to the model we saw earlier we can contrast the process of technology creation and dissemination between entrepreneur-driven and development-driven models.
Entrepreneur-driven technical creation starts with identifying a need in one of these three dimensions and developing a product that will make money. This could be say, cigarettes – a “technology” that is marketed for cultural reasons: increasing prestige, and perhaps bit of functionality, relaxing.
In contrast to entrepreneurs, in development the process seems to follow a different path. In this case, someone develops a technology whose adoption would lead to positive outcomes. For example, Oral Rehydration salts are developed – and then their spread is attempted, trying to take into account the other three factors. Such a technique sometimes stalls due to diffusion issues.
We can explore this more concretely by examining the diffusion of conservation farming.
Conservation farming is a simple set of techniques including digging carefully spaced basins, leaving crop residue on the field after harvest, and some changes in planting time and technique. Yields have increased in real field circumstances (which as any development worker will tell you is much more powerful than any results from experimental farms). But, talking with extension workers in rural Zambia, it seemed farmer uptake was slow. Why?
After talking with a number of farmers and extension agents, it seems like there are some daunting challenges.
On the functionality side: It is a departure from the existing method of hand-hoeing rows, and farmers feel it is risky, and are hesitant to adopt. Close to the edge of poverty, farmers are naturally risk-adverse, because if something is to fail they have no safety nets. As well, another problem is that it is hot and backbreaking to dig basins the first year in the very hard soil, before the rains come. The technique calls for farmers to dig basins in the same place in subsequent years, which lowers labour because the soil becomes looser. But it is difficult to explain to a farmer, after the first difficult year, that just by doing the same thing next year, it will get easier. It is quite complex and requires reasonably precise spacing and measurements and timing to be successful;
On the economic side: Farmers have mentioned that increases in yields are strongest in years where the rain fails, in which case they will have to share their surplus with others in the community who are hungry.
On the social/cultural side:
One farmer wrote “My fellow villagers believed that there is something wrong with me to dig holes in my fields… many mistook me for a hard hashish smoker. They still believe my good harvest is by sheer good luck or witchcraft.” An even bigger issue is farmer motivation and perception. Conservation farming is not "prestigious" because prestige is using ox to plough your field.
This example illustrates some of the difficulties in trying to increase the spread of technologies that produce good outcomes, and illustrates the need to better understand users.
Why do technologists not appreciate users?
 
It may seem that these examples are on such a micro scale that they aren‘t relevant to the people in this room. But I think the opposite is true – it is by understanding what is happening on the ground that we can draw more generalised lessons.
One of those lessons is recognising that technologists not appreciating users is a common trend the world over.
Let’s take the example of Henry Ford’s famous Model T automobile. It dominated the sector – in 1917, 9 out of 10 cars in the world were model Ts. Henry Ford was so convinced that the Model T was the only car that a person could ever need, he stopped advertising, rarely did any R&D and famously said “You can have any colour of car – as long as it’s black.”
But ten years later, production of the Model T was halted because customers were buying other cars.
The insight is that innovators and technology producers don’t really want to listen to their customers. The most important customers to listen to are those who basically complain because they want something different than you are supplying them. It is only private sector competition forces entrepreneurs to listen to their customers.
In the development context, technology developers are not forced to accommodate users’ preferences because of a lack of accountability to those users. The NGOs and government departments who are trying to develop and promote technology are responsible to donors and superiors, not users.
The opportunity – better understanding users
 
I’d like to return to my initial statement that it is important to ensure that technical development efforts better incorporate users needs, because that is the only way that users are likely to adopt new technologies or techniques. A success story reflects this.
In Ghana the government developed the Ghana Regional Appropriate Technology and Industrialisation Service. GRATIS has a program of training rural technical entrepreneurs who understand local context yet have the technical skills to innovate for the people living in their region.
Two ways to better understand users
 
Let me share two ideas how we might be able to get more such success stories.
First, individual members of the senior development community can increase their connection to users.
Let me take a North American example. The chair of our board is the president of Bell Canada and has 16,000 employees reporting to him. He told me one of his biggest challenges is to get information about what is really going on in his company. What do customers think of Bell’s service? What do his frontline employees think? He reads lots of reports, but says that without going out and asking them, he says, you won‘t understand your operations.
Every year, I spend 4 days in a community, trying to understand, to get a glimpse, of rural households’ livelihoods. Then I’ll accompany people on the front-lines of development as they do their job. I’ll spend a day sitting under a tree with some extension workers talking about farming techniques. I’ll spend a day with an entrepreneur as he manufactures a treadle pump. More importantly, all our volunteers do this, so we have accumulated a lot of knowledge about this area.
While we members of the development community have our log frames and M&E studies, it is easy to forget the realities of the frontlines. I think that if senior members of the development community role modelled personally reconnecting with those who are daily engaged in the development struggle, it would start this process of re-focusing on users.
Second, it is important that those involved in funding try to aling their projects incentives with understanding users. For example, in all of the examples I mentioned – the brick press, the Cassava plant, the treadle pump and conservation farming – funding constraints pushed technology developers further from users, not closer.
My main message is the need to listen to users and the need for the development community to align its project incentives with this need to listen to users. What might this look like? What if extension workers were paid on commission for the farming techniques adopted by the farmers in their area? What if technical entrepreneurs made their money selling products to farmers instead of NGOs (by our estimate, in many african countries, between 60-90% of a rural entrepreneurs’ production is bought by an NGO which then sells or gives away the final product). These are but illustrations – the true ideas will result from trial and error exploration by those close to the users.
My question for all the people in the room: how well do you understand your users? How well do you understand the rural poor? How could you understand them better? How could you share what you know with others who might not know it?
Conclusion
Allow me to end with a story that pulls this all together. Last year, I spent 4 days in Nyento, a small village in northern Ghana. The people of Nyento live 50km from a paved road, collect water from a guinea worm infested pond and have no school. This picture of my last night in Nyento represents to me the challenge and promise of technology diffusion.
First, in the foreground is Rchetta, who is cooking in the same manner as her ancestors would have – three rocks, three logs and some old corn cobs. With all the work on improved cookstoves, there is no difference in her task.
In the middle of the picture is Sulleyman, who is heating a metal rod to reattach a belt on a grinding mill that the farmer I was staying with had purchased two years earlier. This was installed by a local entrepreneur – likely trained by GRATIS – and represents what happens when the users’ functional, social/cultural and economics needs are understood.
And finally, if you have good eyesight, you can see the TV set in the background. I was shocked when that afternoon I saw three young boys came pedalling up. One carried a TV, the other a generator and the third a speaker. They were setting up a movie theatre to show movies in the local language, dagbani with an admission of about 1 penny.
This picture represents some of the challenges of the role of technology in Africa’s development and the challenges of technical diffusion Rcheta’s household needs to adopt a lot of new technologies and techniques to help her transform her life.
But there is also hope. Sulleyman‘s work with the grinding mill shows what happens when technology and users are alighned. And the three boys – well, they show that Africa has entrepreneurs who want to spread technology.
It is up to us in the aid industry to take down the barriers and realign the incentives with a greater understanding of and focus on users, so that they’ll have the chance to do so.
Thank you.
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